For Marcus King, sharing about his music comes with a powerful openness about his mental health struggles and substance abuse.
Such war stories aren’t uncommon among musicians, especially rock ’n’ soul road warriors like King. But the good-natured 28-year-old isn’t smiling, or laughing, or inviting flattery. He isn’t reminiscing so much as taking inventory of past traumas. By the time he was 11, King shares, he’d started experiencing what he now recognizes as panic attacks; once, in an effort to soothe a nasty cough, he drank an entire bottle of Robitussin, which led to a hallucinatory episode that frightened him deeply, intensifying these bouts of anxiety. “I would just get worked up,” he says. “I’m still learning how to address those and recognize them.”
“I struggled with that. Bipolar disorder ran in the family,” he adds, “I’ve had abandonment issues and poor attachment styles—all the things that I research now [while trying] to become the best partner that I can be.”
This is, of course, the language of mental-health maintenance, of therapy sessions and self-help reading lists, and King speaks it with equilibrium, like a man for whom sharing or purging means healing. (How’s this for metaphor: King joined our interview from a sauna.) Today, he’s found love and remains committed to both his own wellness and his opportunities as an artist to advocate for mental-health awareness.
Marcus King - F*ck My Life Up Again (Lyric Video)
Yet, he is also keenly aware that the kind of transparency that he expresses himself with isn’t much of a Dixie tradition. “I grew up in a Southern household, and men just didn’t really share their emotions openly,” says King, who was raised by his father, Marvin, a blues guitarist and singer. “Only through music would they even get close.”
King’s new album, Mood Swings, produced by Rick Rubin, is a kind of “open diary,” the guitarist explains, “for everybody to be able to open it up and have a look, have a read.” It chronicles the nadir of those long-running struggles with mental illness and substance abuse, as well as the redemption that arrived in the form of Mrs. Briley King, whom Marcus married last year in Nashville.
Following the vintage boogie rock of 2022’s Young Blood, the new record sounds especially bold, even brazen. At times it features King—a last bastion of guitar-driven integrity amongst late-millennial smartphone culture—performing atop programmed or sampled beats and high-tuned snares, Philly-soul strings, and stirringly modern vocal backing. It summons up an ambiance of contemporary R&B, pop and folk, and the smartly grooving studio-centric vibe that descends from Prince, as well as the artier psychedelic soul of songwriters like Brittany Howard. Sampled dialogue, from the landmark 1959 documentary The Faces of Depression and from one of King’s own elated, drunken voicemails, crops up as candid experimental touches. Mood Swings also finds the guitar god streamlining his solos into concise melodic delights of varying textures, placing the song and the sentiment before the Allmans-styled flights with which he made his name. “If you stay in your wheelhouse and you do something just like you’ve done before, you don’t lose any fans, but you don’t gain any,” King says. “I wanted to do something new and venture my own path and take the guitar along with me.
“[So why not] try to pitch [my instrument] in a way that’s more digestible to a generation who didn’t grow up with guitar-prominent music?”
“I’ve had abandonment issues and poor attachment styles—all the things that I research now [while trying] to become the best partner that I can be.”
Those newer generations, currently facing down historic mental-health crises, should have plenty to connect with in King’s album-length act of catharsis: “Mood Swings,” “F*ck My Life Up Again,” “Soul It Screams,” “Save Me,” “This Far Gone,” “Bipolar Love.” Even “Cadillac,” its namesake an icon of goodtime American songwriting, is a haunting exploration of suicidal ideation. “Not a lot of metaphor in the song; it’s just kind of straight up,” King says. “It is what it is: Cadillac, garage—just kind of my exit strategy, as it were. And not in any way trying to condone, or trying to glorify or romanticize that in any way. Just trying to be truthful as to where I was at the time.”
The recording sessions for Mood Swings started at Shangri-La Studios in Malibu, then later moved to Rubin’s facility in Tuscany, where King would pull 14-hour days working on the record.
Where had King been? To hear him recount the musician’s life that culminated in his version of rock bottom, he was in a kind of fever dream, shuttling between tour dates and writing and recording sessions, as his torment expanded and his ability to take care of himself withered. “I’m a mental patient, technically,” King says. “I seek treatment for mental, chemical imbalances.” But the day-to-day of a touring blues rocker didn’t square with what a therapist might call doing your homework. “I was medicated and then would be improperly medicated, because you’re not really home enough to see someone consistently,” he explains. “If you’re eating at all, you’re eating really shitty food and you’re just drinking your dinner, so your gut health is terrible, [and your] mental health is struggling as a result of it.” On the road nearly 300 days a year, King’s life was largely unfolding inside a van, without “a lot of shit to see between Colorado and St. Louis,” he says. “So you’re just kind of driving, and there’s a lot of ways to numb that—not only the pain, but the mundane as well.”
A few years ago, King started writing in Los Angeles, trapped in a soured relationship he was documenting in real time as new songs, some of which would end up on Mood Swings. He wrote about the “codependent nature of our relationship,” King says, “and the substance abuse that came with it and the excess in everything, passion included.” Later, after his partner suddenly moved thousands of miles away, a debilitating sense of isolation set in. “I couldn’t write; I couldn’t handle it,” he says. Idle time meant indulgence and the wrong kind of company. When concert schedules started up again following the pandemic, King had designs on the most desperate kind of farewell tour. “I had unfortunately made up my mind to check out of here in my own way,” he says, “on my own timeline.”
“I grew up in a Southern household, and men just didn’t really share their emotions openly. Only through music would they even get close.”
In 2019, prior to those writing sessions, the guitarist began talking to Rick Rubin. The super-producer had seen King perform “Goodbye Carolina,” an affecting midtempo rocker off 2018’s Carolina Confessions, in his Grand Ole Opry debut, and decided to make a cold call. “We spoke for quite a while about mental health and about viewing it as a writing partner,” King says, “allowing it to help me speak my truth.” A studied music fan whose knowledge belies his age, King had “always revered Rick,” he says. He recalls how Rubin’s late-career recordings of Johnny Cash were some of the last music that King and his grandfather, a country fan and performer, absorbed together. As a tween, the guitarist started digging into hip-hop, eventually making his way to the pioneering LPs that Rubin helmed for Def Jam, by the likes of Public Enemy, Beastie Boys, and Run-D.M.C. He especially appreciated Rubin’s beaten-path-detour efforts to combine rap and rock. “I really liked the phrasing,” he says, “and the way [hip-hop MCs] would rhythmically say what they needed to say over breakbeats. And I loved James Brown, and everybody [in hip-hop] was sampling ‘Funky Drummer,’ so everything just kind of came full circle in those moments.”
Marcus King's Gear
The 28-year-old King grew up listening to Johnny Cash, then later, hip-hop artists like Public Enemy and the Beastie Boys.
Guitars
- “Big Red”: 1962 Gibson ES-345 originally purchased by King’s grandfather
- Gibson Custom Shop Marcus King 1962 ES-345 with Sideways Vibrola
- 1962 Fender Stratocaster
- Harmony Sovereign acoustic
- Gibson dreadnought owned by Rick Rubin (used on Mood Swings)
- Gibson ES-330 (Shangri-La studio backline, used on Mood Swings)
- 1939 Martin D-18
Amps
- Fender Super Reverb (studio)
- Fender Deluxe Reverb (studio)
- Orange MK Ultra Marcus King Signature 30-watt head (live)
- Orange slanted 8x10 cabs with Celestion speakers (live)
- 1968 Fender Bandmaster head/Bassman cab with two Celestion 15" speakers (live)
Effects
- Ibanez Tube Screamer
- Tru-Fi Colordriver
- Tru-Fi Two Face
- Tru-Fi Ultra Tremolo
- Dunlop EP103 Echoplex Delay
- Dunlop Rotovibe
- MXR Phase 100
- MXR M300 Reverb
- MXR Micro Chorus
Strings & Picks
- Elixir Nanoweb (.011–.049)
- Dunlop Jazz III
When the sessions for Mood Swings commenced at the Shangri-La studio in Malibu, King found himself jamming with one of the funkiest drummers alive, Chris Dave, at Rubin’s behest. Alongside King and Dave, whose credits include Robert Glasper, D’Angelo, Maxwell and Meshell Ndegeocello, was keyboardist Cory Henry, a jazz, R&B, and gospel ace who earned acclaim in the fusion collective Snarky Puppy. Rubin’s idea, King comments, was simply for the trio “to create. And I think one of the initial ideas to approach this album was to kind of sample ourselves.” For about a week and a half, in six-, seven- and eight-hour days, the trio jammed and explored using a handful of simple, folkish songs King brought in.
For his part, Rubin was nowhere to be found, though he was still overseeing the sessions. “I’ll tell you,” King begins, “Rick is such a truthful, and whimsical, fan of music. He loves music so much, and he’s such a sweet human. But some of the stories you hear about him, about his eccentric approach to producing, are true.” Like the “Producer of Oz,” Rubin had GoPro cameras and microphones set up around the band, to monitor progress from afar. “He was like, omnipresent,” King says. “His presence was there, but not physically. It was really kind of a trip.”
“I was in that situation, like, breaking bad habits,” King adds, “and trying to abandon the idea that the structure and the form needed to be there before we started experimenting.”
“If you stay in your wheelhouse and you do something just like you’ve done before, you don’t lose any fans, but you don’t gain any.”
About a year later, after the sessions had moved to Rubin’s facility in Tuscany, songcraft came further into focus. King pulled 14-hour days, and Rubin, in the flesh, offered his famously sage insight. “I was really pleased to find out that this is the most intimately Rick’s been involved in a project in some time. And we spent every day together,” King says. “We would just sit on adjacent couches and listen back to what I’d done the day before.”
King first connected with Rubin after Rubin made a cold call to the guitarist after having been impressed by his Grand Ole Opry debut performance.
Photo by Tim Bugbee
One of the more fascinating angles of Mood Swings is how it represents progress, not only for King, but for his producer as well. Part of the Rubin lore has been his unmatched ability to deliver great artists from periods of profound and often painful change, by having them tap into their quintessential sounds, as if harnessing their most vital contributions to rock history. Think of Metallica’s return-to-thrash-form on Death Magnetic, or John Frusciante embracing sobriety to rejoin Red Hot Chili Peppers for Californication.
With Mood Swings, Rubin helped King regain his footing in life by unsettling him creatively, urging him toward audacious work that is nonetheless streaked with King’s signature brilliance. “Delilah” evokes the kind of wistful, classic R&B ballad that the Greenville, South Carolina’s Marcus King Band delivered with period precision. On “Bipolar Love,” its chorus a hooky, soulful marvel, King plays a luminous solo of unerring taste on Big Red, the trusty Gibson ES-345 that belonged to his grandfather, through a Fender Deluxe Reverb. Elsewhere, the album renders Marcus King a consummate neo-soul rhythm player and a shrewd, sonically curious soloist. Rubin and King employed the 6-string “the way that we approach any of the instrumentation that we love. We would deconstruct everything to the point that it was foundationally sound,” King says, so that “the song could stand up on its own with just the vocal.” (This was judicious, as King can sound like an heir apparent to Solomon Burke, with bits of Joplin grit.)
“We spoke for quite a while about mental health and about viewing it as a writing partner, allowing it to help me speak my truth.”
Still, expect to find multiple Reddit threads offering both transcriptions and attempts to decode the masterfully dialed tones throughout Mood Swings. To start, King explained that his leads here “are a little more polished, just because I wanted them to be more like written solos, almost. They were improvised in the moment, but obviously I was stacking them or adding harmonies…. Then [the solo] kind of became a part, because you gotta play it the same way every time.”
King is a guitar obsessive, to be sure, but you’d never tag him a geek; he speaks about gear and technique with a meaningful, big-picture expertise that comes off as nonchalance. During the Mood Swings sessions, he didn’t have access to a massive arsenal of gear, but did smart work with some loyal axes, among them Big Red and his red Tele, his ’62 Strat, his Harmony Sovereign acoustic, and a Gibson J-45 or J-50 owned by Rubin. On “F*ck My Life Up Again,” he tracked the backwards solo on a Strat, “trying to go full Hendrix,” he says. Amp-wise there, he recalls a “Super Reverb in a big chambered hallway—get some natural ’verb, amp cranked,” along with what he believes was his Tru-Fi Colordriver for fuzz. (I’d like to rank this the second-finest Hendrixian backwards solo to go down on Rubin’s watch, following only Frusciante on “Give It Away.”) For “Hero,” a cowrite with the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, he tracked a Strat slide solo on top of an acoustic lead. The slide work on the sanctified “Me or Tennessee” is a triumvirate of Strat, Super Reverb, and Tube Screamer, and finds King invoking the sacred-steel tradition, as turbocharged by Roosevelt Collier and Robert Randolph. For some of his favorite tones on the record, King decided to go straight “David Gilmour and hook the fuzz pedal up and play straight through the console and just high-pass it.”
The core performer trio on Mood Swings was made up of King, drummer Chris Dave, and keyboardist Cory Henry.
Mood Swings is still a kick-ass guitar record, even if it’s not a willfully “kick-ass guitar record” like King’s previous effort, Young Blood, produced by Auerbach with bloozy panache and released on Rubin’s American label. When that homage to the early ’70s was captured, King was still in a bad place. “I was really mentally detached during the recording process,” he admits, even as he takes pride in its ZZ Top swagger. And although certain songs foreshadowed the confessional bent of Mood Swings, King says he “didn’t feel as personally connected to some of the material.” In a way, he explains, his primary instrument became a crutch. “I felt like I leaned more heavily on the guitar, which had always been a safety blanket for me from when I was a kid, from young traumas to teenage traumas.”
“His presence was there, but not physically. It was really kind of a trip.”
Back in 2021, in the summer before Young Blood was announced, King returned to the road following the pandemic, opening dates for Nathaniel Rateliff. “On that first show back, I realized my actions and everything I was up to extracurricular-ly affected me performing,” King says. “I was having a hard time getting through the show.” The following morning, his health necessitated a doctor’s consult. “He said, ‘Just don’t quit everything at once, and just start putting things down,’” King shares. “And then that’s kind of when I started that process.” That same day, King met his wife, Briley, who sweetens “Delilah” and “Cadillac” with vocals. “I met her, and she had her shit together and I did not,” he says. “And I just wanted to have my shit together for her…. And I wanted to have my shit together for myself, for the first time in a long time.”
King’s focus these days, he says, is doing the heavy lifting of improving his physical and mental health. “It’s like anything else, man. It’s a skill and it’s not innate,” he argues. “I kind of [liken] it to reading music. I used to read music, but if you put something in front of me now, I couldn’t do it.”
Already his efforts are paying off. “I was out in L.A. recently, doing some work, and I got to the hotel I was staying at … and it was the same room that I’d stayed at when I wrote ‘Bipolar Love,’” he recalls. “Just being back in that same room … ’cause they say a man never stands in the same river twice, it felt like I was back in that river, I’d returned. And I just was completely different and water had already flowed through. It felt really full-circle and validating, the whole process.”
YouTube It
Watch King perform “Goodbye Carolina” in his 2019 Grand Ole Opry debut—the performance that captured the interest of super-producer Rick Rubin.
While studying jazz performance at Berklee Global Jazz Institute, Moser was mentored by musicians such as Danilo Pérez, John Patitucci, and Victor Wooten.
Blind. So What? was created as part of her master’s of jazz performance program at Boston’s Berklee Global Jazz Institute, where she was mentored by such esteemed musicians as Danilo Pérez, John Patitucci, Joe Lovano, and Victor Wooten. Her 6-string Fodera Emperor 6 Standard can be heard all over the record, and the title concept is front and center in the lyrics. Each song addresses a specific topic—and Moser does not mince words.
“The goal or the achievement that I’m looking for is to call for more awareness of blind people, and also, generally, for people with disabilities,” Moser says. “For me, some significant things about myself are the music that I play and being blind. It was always the question: How can I combine that? Why don’t I use my music to change what I want to change about inclusion and blindness? The Global Jazz Institute gave me the tools to actually do that through my music, because I could never connect those two elements 100 percent. Of course, I knew I already did that, standing out there publicly as a blind musician, but actually addressing the topic and writing an album about it is even more important, in my opinion.”
Ciara Moser - "Developing Senses"
Co-produced by Moser and Warren Petty, Blind. So What? begins with a cacophonous 38-second handshake, “Intro (Screen Reader),” where the words “blind, so what?” are read by computer software in 16 different languages. In the liner notes, Moser explains that it “should attract the listeners’ attention to the audible world a blind person lives in, and open up new ways of perceiving and listening.” Then, she gets into some real talk on the rest of the album, a modern jazz collection which fluidly dips and dives into funk, R&B, ambient, Latin, experimental, and, in one song, a kind of South Indian Carnatic vocal scatting called “konnakol.”
“Some significant things about myself are the music that I play and being blind. It was always the question: How can I combine that?”
Moser doesn’t sing lead on any of the songs (although she does some spoken word, including the album’s improvised finale, “The Lady with a Green Cane,” a poem by Fran Gardner). She hands that task over to best friend and fellow Berklee student Aditi Malhotra on a half-dozen songs, while Nishant Shekar, another close friend and member of the Berklee Indian Ensemble, sings the first single, the funky, R&B-tinged jazz number “I Trust,” which begins with this instruction of sorts: “Imagine how it is to live in a world that you can’t see / Relying on someone else’s helping hand, following every step, every turn, every move that’s made / Trust in your friends and family.”
But what follows is even more direct. “Disability is a stamp they put on us / I am a person like you / But you still treat me like I’m some kind of different thing,” Moser writes for the song “Different Ability, Pt. 1.” In the percussive “Memory,” for which she won a 2023 Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composers award, Moser explains her musical process: “I am memorizing every bit and piece of each song / For playing everything with discipline, concentration / I save it to my hard drive and use my memory to find the way through all the pieces I play.” That’s the actual lyric.
On her debut record Blind. So What?, virtuoso Ciara Moser dazzles with spectacular bass performances and striking lyrics about her life experience.
It’s an atypical approach to songwriting, and even more so for jazz, a style of music that often envelops you. Moser’s lyrics pull you out of that reverie, offering an opportunity to actively listen and learn.
“Obviously, a lot of those topics that I chose are from the viewpoint of a blind person who grew up in a very sighted society,” says Moser. “But still, even if you grew up around a lot of blind people, you’re still in this sighted society that’s built for sighted people. So every topic is related to that.”
“Even if you grew up around a lot of blind people, you’re still in this sighted society that’s built for sighted people.”
The title of the album is something Moser has felt for years. She created a podcast of the same name, in which she talks frankly about everything from how she does her makeup, to how she knows when she has her period, to how she keeps her place tidy.
“My dad and I, and my brothers and my mom, we were always talking about creating this movie called ‘Blind. So What?,’ about our family. [It would be] a documentary, because it’s kind of crazy: this Irish woman marrying this Austrian, and their children—two of them are blind. And they live in Ireland first and move to Austria, where we were always the crazy family in this super small village,” Moser recounts. “Then, when I started the podcast about blindness, obviously it’s about [being] blind, so what? I still live my life normally and can do everything. It was clear that the album would be named this as well.”
Ciara Moser's Gear
Moser’s parents started her on violin as a child, but she found her musical home when she picked up the bass.
Photo by Kaffee Siebenstern
Basses
- Fodera Emperor 6 Standard
- Fender American Elite Jazz Bass V
- Marco Marcustico
Amps
- Markbass Standard 104HR
- Markbass Traveler 121H
- Markbass Little Mark Tube 800
- Markbass Little Mark III
- Markbass Mini CMD 121P
Effects
- Zoom B6 Bass Multi-Effects Processor
- Boss DD-7 Digital Delay
- Boss AW-3 Dynamic Wah
- EHX Micro POG
- Dunlop DVP3 Volume (X)
Strings
- D’Addario NYXL32130s
Moser’s parents always instilled in her that she was just like everybody else, and her life would be no different than that of a sighted person.
“They felt music would be an important thing to help me build some skill sets as a blind child because it’s not only good for the ears, but also for motoric skills and for coordination, and for social interaction with other kids,” Moser says. “So I started learning violin when I was 2 and a half.” She played violin throughout her youth, even entering competitions, but it was with bass that Moser found a perfect fit. “For me,” she says, “the bass always had that role of being the glue.”
“They felt music would be an important thing to help me build some skill sets as a blind child.”
In her early teens, Moser played in a pop-rock band with her two brothers— her younger one is also blind—and two other friends. “It was called Blind Brats,” she laughs. Her first bass was a “super cheap” Ibanez, and an instructor would come to the family home to give her lessons.
Blind. So What?, which showcases Moser’s 6-string Fodera bass, was created as part of her master's of jazz performance program at the Berklee Global Jazz Institute.
Photo by Manuela Haeussler
In high school, she started to play in more bands, and after two years, she bought a Fender American Deluxe Jazz Bass. Around that time, her instructor suggested that she enroll at Borg Linz, a pop-music-focused high school in Linz, Austria, a half hour away from her house. Classes were divided into two bands and given recording projects, where students learned how to produce music and write songs.
“There, I started to play in my first professional funk band,” says Moser. “It was called Round Corner, and the guitarist got me in a fusion trio that he started with the same drummer of the band. That was the first time I started playing more complicated music—the music of Scott Henderson, Greg Howe, Guthrie Govan, those kinds of fusion guitar players. We also played some stuff from the band Lettuce. They were actually Berklee graduates, as well.
“If it’s really important, I normally ask somebody to tell me all the knobs on the amp. But, if we don’t have time, then I just have to work with my fingers and the bass.”
“And then I went to those yearly big-band workshops where you play in a big band and you also have instrumental lessons. And there, I started to play jazz, more straight-ahead.”
Moser then started going to college in Vienna, and a year later, decided she needed “at least a 5-string.” She drove all the way to Augsburg, Germany, to a shop called Station Music. “They had like 600 basses and I tried a lot of them,” she recalls. “There was this one Fodera bass that is now my bass. I really resonated with the sound and the feel of the instrument.
“It was the overall feel of the neck that I really loved—the wood of the neck makes a lot of difference. I feel like it even makes a slight difference in the sound, because I tried some of them with dark necks and with brighter necks. But, also, what I liked about that bass was the preamp, which is cool because later, at Berklee, I studied with Mike Pope, who designed that preamp with Fodera. It’s always been striking to me how in any rehearsal room I walk into, the preamp on the bass is so well-designed that I can put the EQ of the amp flat, then just work my way around it with the bass. That’s been something that’s been supporting me as a blind person because I can’t see all the knobs on the amp. If I have a gig, or if it’s really important, I normally ask somebody to tell me all the knobs on the amp. But, if we don’t have time, then I just have to work with my fingers and the bass.”
Moser says she has yet to do any in-depth modifications or have a luthier do a custom build, but she did add a “little secret.” “I have tape on the 7th fret and on the 12th fret on the back of the neck so I can jump to wherever I want, so I can have some anchor points on the bass,” she says, adding, “I’ve been so busy performing, and I’ve been so happy with what I’ve played right now that it’s been hard to convince myself to get a different product. But I’m open to trying new instruments and defining new pathways and sounds.”
Moser is involved with Austria’s blind community, and with her experience and successes, Moser wants to help guide young blind musicians.
Photo by Manuela Haeussler
Moser, who in October finished a master’s in instrumental and vocal pedagogy from the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, just did a tour of Austria at eight venues and is in the process of booking festivals and shows for this year in Europe and the U.S. She also plans on releasing an additional EP that will feature a “Different Ability” suite, “because my journey has not ended regarding that.”
“It took me a while to understand that my disability is not a disability,” she says. “I always knew my disability is a characteristic, but I still put it down a lot. I should actually put it up and highlight it, but in a good way.”
“I always knew my disability is a characteristic, but I still put it down a lot. I should actually put it up and highlight it, but in a good way.”
Moser says sighted people should not feel uncomfortable about asking questions of blind people. At least, she doesn’t mind. “They say, ‘I’m so sorry to ask you, but are you blind from birth?’ And I’m like, ‘Why are you sorry to ask me that?’ It’s as if you ask me if I have brown hair or what my size is, you know what I mean? I don’t mind talking about that. It’s part of me and it’s always gonna be. I think for them, it’s just because they’re coming from their perspective and not from my perspective,” she reasons. “So, if they would be imagining themselves blind right now, they can’t because they don’t know how it works. It’s basically ignorance, and I’m used to it. I’m used to explaining that to people every day.”
Moser is an educator herself, who often works with young people and colleagues who are blind musicians. “In Austria, I’m very involved in a blind scene, and, also at Berklee, there are always between five and eight blind students,” she explains. “I would say I’m kind of like their consultor. They always ask me questions like, ‘How did you do this?’ and ‘How do you think this could be done?’ If I meet parents of a young blind child, it’s very important for me to have that role model position and to help, because I know it’s very challenging for parents of a blind child. But for the blind child, of course, it’s challenging as well. So I definitely want to take that role.”
YouTube It
Along with a killer ensemble featuring Nishant Shekar on vocals, Ciara Moser plays live in the studio in the music video for “I Trust,” and takes a dazzling, playful solo.
The Menzingers’ albums are storied time capsules. Starting in 2007 with teen angst and rebellion, they’ve refined and reshaped their narratives into self-reflective numbers that continue to balance melody and might. Their most-recent installment—2023’s Some of It Was True—was their eighth chapter that stares down aging with acceptance rather than anger. But don’t get it twisted, these rockers will still charge.
“This record just feels different for us,” Barnett explains. “It’s a really important one in our catalog, and a pivotal moment in our history. We have the liberty of our fans growing with us now, and after writing these lyrical songs about where we are in life, we decided to take other peoples’ stories and make something bigger out of it.” “It brought us back to our energetic side as a band,” May concurs. “We got to let loose, which is what drew us to the energy of being in a band in the first place. This is a live band—why shouldn’t we record live songs? As a result, we’re back to why we started this band in the first place.”
In support of Some of It Was True, the Philly crew toured the States and touched down in Nashville mid-November for a romper at the Marathon Music Works. Before their headlining set in Music City, both singing-guitarists Greg Barnett and Tom May welcomed PG’s Perry Bean onstage to converse about their setups. Barnett explained the pros and cons of being a left-handed player, while May divulged the inspiration for his loved Les Pauls. Both detailed why they prefer a two-amp rig, and each demoed the various sounds set off from their respective pedalboards.
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'57 Knockoff
Cofrontman and guitarist Greg Barnett is a lefty, so his relationship with guitars has been a double-edged sword. On one hand, stores don’t often stock instruments to his picking orientation, however, finding a needle in a haystack has proven more fruitful than a righty’s quest since there’s more of a demand. But when he can’t find something in the secondary market, he’ll go straight to the source as he did when ordering this 2022 1957 Custom Shop Les Paul Goldtop reissue from HQ in Nashville, Tennessee. “This has pretty much become my number one touring guitar,” he says. “It’s all stock and I usually play half the set with it.”
All the guitars used by Barnett and May take Ernie Ball Nickel Wound Custom Gauge strings (.011–.052).
Just For Jawbreaker
Barnett bought this grizzled 1992 Gibson Les Paul Custom while on tour. “We had just played Riot Fest with Jawbreaker the night before and I saw Blake Schwarzenbach playing a White Les Paul Custom and thought, ‘Damn I need one!’ We had the next day off in St. Louis and I saw one for sale. I hit the guy up and we drove the tour bus right to his house. He was so stoked!” Greg dropped in a set of Seymour Duncan Antiquity humbuckers and upgraded its pots.
Take a Bow!
For a band that started in Scranton, Pennsylvania, it makes sense that one of their gear meccas is Russo Music in Philadelphia. And that’s where Barnett scooped this Gibson 1957 Custom Shop Les Paul Junior that’s all stock and was used exclusively during the band’s Nashville encore that included “Tellin’ Lies” and “Casey.”
The Waiting Is the Hardest Part
An Electric Spanish model from Gibson has been on Barnett’s bucket list. It took some time and online sleuthing, but he uncovered his dream ride—this 2015 Gibson Custom Shop 1964 ES-335—during a late-night surf of Reverb. It’s all stock. It can be heard specifically on “Come On Heartache” off of Some of It Was True.
Marshall Matters
Barnett is a two-amp sort of player. The left side is his 100-watt 1985 Marshall JCM800 that was his first “pro” amp. He acquired it off Craigslist over a decade ago and “it’s been the most reliable piece of gear I’ve ever owned.” The right side of the equation is a 2023 Marshall JTM45 that represents the cleaner side of the twin Marshall blend.
Greg Barnett's Pedalboard
A Korg Pitchblack tuner is where the guitar hits the pedalboard. Barnett loves how much the EarthQuaker Devices Hoof Reaper’s Reaper side, that’s based on a 3-knob Bender-style fuzz, cuts through in a mix. It gets introduced for songs “Thick as Thieves” and “Rodent.”
The EarthQuaker Plumes pedal is engaged for all Barnett’s leads and solos. “I really back EQD for creating such high-quality pedals at an introductory price point,” he attests. “And, no, they didn’t pay me to say that!”
The Klon KTR works as a boost with the gain all the way down, to boost choruses and some heavier intro parts. The Boss DD-3 is from 1988 and has a “long chip.” It sounds incredible and Greg employs it for “Try.” “When we recorded the song, I layered a lot of feedback over the outro. To mimic that, I have the pedal set with the feedback almost all the way up. I let the first note oscillate into infinity and then try to create a bunch of different artifacts over it.”
The remaining three pedals include a MXR Analog Chorus, a Strymon Flint, and a Strymon El Capistan.
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Guitar (*But Were Afraid to Ask)
Ever since Tom May saw John Carvalho of A Wilhelm Scream, Sheena Ozzella of Lemuria, and Scott Brigham of the Flatliners rock a walnut Gibson The Paul, he wanted one to join their outsider squad. He scored his 1981 Paul “Woody” from Emerald City Guitars in Seattle.
Finger-Lickin' Good
May’s “Tasty” 1982 Gibson Les Paul Custom was purchased from one of his guitar heroes, the Bouncing Souls’ Pete Steinkopf. Tom said Pete used it on the Souls’ first two albums (The Good, the Bad, and the Argyle and Maniacal Laughter) and it has been featured on the Menzingers’ work starting with 2014’s Rented World. It was nicknamed “Tasty” by May’s friend Kate Hiltz. Ironically enough, Kate and another friend opened a vegan diner in Philadelphia and called it The Tasty.
Monotrapa Uniflora
May’s 2023 Fender American Vintage II 1975 Telecaster Deluxe is named “Ghost Pipe” as it features a sticker of the peculiarly white parasitic plant that grows off nutrients from tree roots. It’s his newest addition and has already proven to be a steady steed that’s “the real one.”
Transatlantic Tones
Tom has plugged into this Fender ’65 Deluxe Reverb (or a variation of it) on every record since After the Party and every single tour since 2017. British flavorings come from the handwired Vox AC30HWH that runs into an Orange 4x12. It’s loaded with a pair of stock Celestion Vintage 30s, and May replaced the other V30s with a couple of Celestion G12M Greenbacks.
Tom May's Pedalboard
The J. Rockett Archer was a helpful suggestion from Greg, and it hasn’t left May’s pedalboard since the purchase (and even has two spares). It’s always on and May loves how it can attenuate his signal and highlights his more expressive playing.
He works out the Strymon TimeLine by utilizing nearly 10 settings throughout a set that ranges from a quick 100 ms bit to thicken up leads to a full reverse delay-signal-only mix preset for pad-sounding ambient layers. Even though he’s fine-tuned it to Menzingers’ sets, he’s still discovering new sounds with it.
The Boss RC-5 Loop Station launches a little sample they use: “Incredibly powerful pedal I use for one-trick.”
The 1980s Maxon FL-301 Flanger is close to the one used in the verse guitar parts of “There’s No Place in This World for Me.” “I used one in the studio as a half joke after having a bit of a bout adding flanger to Some of It Was True, but sure enough it made it,” says May. He bought it from a small shop in Paris, Guitar Street on 24 Rue Victor Massé.
And while it made the video, the Fulltone OCD has since been retired from touring duties.
Finally, the 7-channel American Looper allows May to instantly switch between effects combinations with one toe kick.
Shop the Menzingers' Rig
2022 1957 Custom Shop Les Paul Goldtop Reissue
Ernie Ball Nickel Wound Custom Gauge Strings
Seymour Duncan Antiquity Humbuckers
2015 Gibson Custom Shop 1964 ES-335
1985 Marshall JCM800
2023 Marshall JTM45
Korg Pitchblack Tuner
EarthQuaker Devices Hoof Reaper
EarthQuaker Devices Plumes
MXR Analog Chorus
Strymon Flint
Strymon El Capistan
2023 Fender American Vintage II 1975 Telecaster Deluxe
Fender ’65 Deluxe Reverb
Orange 4x12
Celestion Vintage 30s
Celestion G12M Greenbacks
J Rockett Archer
Strymon TimeLine
Boss RC-5
Fulltone OCD